Writing like Chandler (NaPoWriMo)

It was raining heavily
like the clouds couldn’t hold their bladders
there were just the two of them in the bar
like two proverbial strangers fated to meet
he thought she was like a double shot of brandy
on a freezing January night
she felt he was tepid
like afternoon’s leftover soup
the silence between them stretched
like a slack clothesline
his mind was forming words eagerly
but his tongue remained immovable like a bollard
finally her foghorn like voice broke the spell for him
he realised she was not a slip of a girl like the slip of tongue
when she rose she was lurching
like a battleship that had lost its moorings
he quickly exited like a startled beaver in the night.

Raymond Chandler

Today’s challenge is to channel your inner gumshoe, and write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile. Feel free to use just one, or try to go for broke and stuff your poem with similes till it’s . . . as dense as bread baked by a plumber, as round as the eyes of a girl who wants you to think she’s never heard such language, and as easy to miss as a brass band in a cathedral.